Tips for plying your perfect yarn

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Transcript

0:01

Hello, this is Kim Biegler, owner of Ewethful Fiber Farm and Mill, and I am coming to you from home in Harrisburg, Oregon, and this week we are going to talk about plying our yarn. I just did a workshop over on our Patreon community, and we talked all about plying. for a long time. I had so many notes, but it was a lot of fun. And I wanted to share some of the top tips and things that hopefully people in the workshop took away from that. Before I forget, you can find the Ewethful Patreon community in the show notes. There is a link. There are all sorts of fun perks that come with it besides just supporting some of the content that hopefully you appreciate listening to. And that's why you're here. So head there if you want to get more details on that. And I did want to remind you also that in the Ewethful community, we are doing a spin to knit along. We just started it, so if you want to join in and you need some inspiration and some extra fun and guidance along the way. This is it. And you can find it. We do have a link in the Ewethful community. There is a post in Ravelry that you can jump on there, join it, share, comment, all those things. There are pattern suggestions that we're doing for it. And We'll all just be there to cheer each other on and get this done and knit with our hands fun yarn, most importantly, or crochet or weave, whatever you may be doing. So there's a link to that Ravelry group in the show notes. And I'll also be encouraging people on Patreon as well. And people that are in, that are paid subscribers to Patreon, anyone doing the Spinton Knit Along, will also be entered in to win a gift at each level. So, a little extra encouragement. Okay, so let's talk about plying our yarn and plying yarn is the act of taking singles, spun singles of yarn and putting them together into a multiply yarn. So why would we ply? Sorry, you all. I'm finishing up the delicious walnuts from down the road, the farm down the road, and they are getting caught. Okay, so why ply? Here are my biggest top reasons to ply yarn. And of course, you could just always work with singles yarn, but why would you ply it? The main reason, and I think the biggest reason that most of us go to besides just default, is Plying yarns makes for stronger yarns. So if you have a two ply yarn, so you've taken two singles, you've plied them together, you have a stronger yarn than that single yarn was. If you put three plies in, if you put four plies in, it just gets stronger and stronger. So the actual integrity of the yarn strengthens with plies. And this can be great depending on what kind of projects you're working on, right? If you need a more sturdy, strong yarn, like a sock yarn, you would definitely want to do like a three ply yarn. That's your happy place because you're going to want lots of strength for that project. That's going to get a lot of wear. Okay. So strength. The second one would really be how it looks and how it is for you to work with, right? So the more plies you add, you tend to get a rounder yarn, a rounder looking yarn. I love a round yarn. Do I spin that very often? No, my default is a two ply, but I'm trying to get out of my default zone and into more of a three ply zone because I really do like a good three ply. And how is it to work with for plying, you know, like you can ply for different reasons. If you have an underplied yarn, it may have a little bit more drape to it. If you, like I mentioned before, if you want a stronger yarn for a project, you might want that three ply. You may even want a single because I have knit a bag out of a single and then felted it in the washer and it went really well with that single. So it just kind of depends what you like in your yarn and what you want to use the yarn for. And then my third reason is mainly just for fun, right? I brought this up in the workshop and there were some people that were like, oh my gosh, I've never thought about that, but you can ply different yarns together. Just because you have plied, you're working on this, whatever it may be, say merino, doesn't mean you have to ply that single yarn. With merino. You could apply it with something else. I mentioned how I did a whole sweater That was a single of Rambouillet, natural colored gray Rambouillet that had spun and I applied it with a commercially spun Mohair silk. So the sky's the limit. You can really make your own unique yarn. So those are my main reasons to ply, right? Here's what I'm going to say before I go into the rest of this. If you like the yarn you're making and you like how you are plying or not plying or whatever it is you're doing, you are winning. Done. You could just disregard the whole rest of this. But what I'm going to say moving forward is just kind of like standards. If you want some standards or I'm not going to say rules, but just some, some standards to go along with. And you can see if you like them or not more tools, more techniques, basically, if you like your yarn though, win. Okay. So here are my three, I had three kind of big tips going into every ply job. So no matter what you're spinning, I think these apply to that. So the first one is, and some people are not going to love this. And my explanation is probably not going to make you love it anymore. But my first one is. In theory, in practice, you are supposed to bump up your ratio on your drive band when you go to ply. So what that means is the twist is going to get entered more slowly into your yarn. Okay, so what most spinners do is the opposite. Because you're at the plying stage, you want to knock this out. And so the faster the twist gets in, the faster you're done. You can totally do that. But in practice what you should, I'm not gonna say the word should, good practice is to jump up your ratio on your drive band. And the reason is that, it's not going to be the best answer, but you could really get into the nitty gritty of this you want. But the basic answer is that it is to get the best out of your machine. So your machine's going to work best at plying a yarn at a slower pace. So take that for what it is. But it, the same goes when I was spinning commercial yarn at the mill. We were instructed to slow the machine down for plying. So I have confirmation from multiple sources that this is legit. And I think I learned it, the first person that taught it to me was Juth McKenzie in a class. And I don't think I did it. Now I do. after just time and time again, running up against that same information. So take that for what you want. Okay. The second tip, this one I think is huge. is to count while you are plying. I am not a count while I'm spinning person. Some people are. I am 100 percent always a count while I am plying person. So your count generally if you're on an e spinner, an e spinner, it's going to be different. If you are on a wheel, generally speaking, your count is you're treadling, right? So every revolution of your wheel, you're kind of doing a count and that's just going to rhythmically happen. So. count because this is the best way to know if you like the count you're getting or even your average like your default yarn you may most of the time be plying the same but you will never know if you're not counting right or if you really like a yarn and you're like why do I like this one so much better than that one plied well this could be why. So here's my guidance for counting. I generally like sit back from my orifice of my wheel, I would say my hands are about 12 inches back when I'm plying. That means that the twist is coming off the wheel for about 12 inches and then I'm letting the wheel take the yarn from me. So in that time frame from the time that yarn gets taken up to the time that it gets to the back of my 12 inches, how many counts is that? So count, count, count, count, and it flows into the next. idea and I'll talk more about count in a minute, but that's kind of how I gauge my, I kind of sit a certain amount back from my wheel and then I know. The next point is take notes. I did not used to do this well and I have gotten better and better and better over the year to the point where I finally have started a journal where I keep, because I just have found that even though I'll write stuff on like even a label on the yarn, writing in a journal gives me more space to write more information. And I'm just a little more mindful about the information I'm writing. So That's where I'm writing. Maybe you're writing how far back from the wheel you were, how many counts you did. All of that information, the fiber, where it's from can be written down and then referred back to, which is amazing. And in a notebook, you also can put a sample, which is amazing. Okay. So those are my big three tips that I think apply to any ply job. Okay. How much twist? In your applying is Totally a personal preference. We'll start there totally a personal preference You may want to be less plied because you want more drape in the yarn You might want to be more applied because you want more spring back in the yarn So that's totally up to you and up to the project my ideal and i'm going to say ideal I have seen this It's in different places, very different people teaching, very different, so you could also throw this out the window, but the ideal, I believe, is that when you take your yarn off of your knitty knotty or whatever, when your finished yarn comes off the wheel, before you've soaked it, And you pop it off that knitty knotty, you should have multiple twists still in that yarn. So you take it off and it kind of twists back on itself. I like to see several of those, because here's what's going to happen. If you soak that, which we should always do right after our finished yarn, and it settles and relaxes, You, if you had a perfectly balanced yarn, so let's say you took it off the knitty knotty, it was just perfect O shape of a skein and you go and soak it, it's going to relax. And then in theory, it's going to be Underplied because it's relaxed out of that perfect balance if you take it off and it's this And it's this nice beautiful o shape and there's no spring back to it That is a nicely balanced yarn at that moment But maybe not so much when you go to soak it So I like to have several twists to it Because when I soak it some of that's going to relax out and y'all I don't mind if I have one or two twists left You after it's dried. But generally speaking, let's say you had two to three twists. When you pulled it off your knitty knotty, you soak it, you're going to have a pretty balanced yarn, not under applied. And under applied is the most common thing I see with hand spinners. with their finished yarn is an underplied yarn. So how do you get to that place if you want to get there? Honestly, the easiest thing I think to do is to just look at your yarn. Ingrid, who was in the workshop, said she looks at the degrees in her yarn. I may sneeze, so excuse me if I do. She looks at the degrees in her yarn. So literally, we all know 360, divide that in half, 180. So the ideal degree that you're looking for in your yarn is 45 degrees. 45 degrees. When you're looking at those plies, so when you look at yarn and you can see there's multiple plies in there, you're looking for about a 45 degree angle between those plies, like those little spaces in there. They're going to look at an angle. 45 degrees is kind of your happy place. Now you may not like that, but I'm going to say this is your happy place. So, give it a shot. Look at it. And you can get gauges. I think I have some even in my shop where there's a wood gauge that you can look and you can lay your yarn on it and try to figure out the degrees that way. Or you can just eyeball it. Whatever works best for you. But that's kind of what you're going for. And the other idea of how to get there is to count. So we'll go back to the counting multiple times. Count, count, count, count. Because you're never going to know what got you to that nice degree that you like. Okay. If you don't count, right, you're not going to know. And this is especially important if you're, say, doing like a sweater quantity. Because, let's say that sweater quantity is lasting you, it's spinning, you're spinning this up over a year. Maybe you have multiple wheels and you're stopping and you're spinning other things along the way on other wheels. How are you ever going to remember? what twist you were putting on that ply. So count, write it down and try some sampling. You know, you can do, I did this for the workshop. I had a couple of different samples, which we're going to talk about next. And you can compare them side by side, even do swatches. If you want to see which one you actually like the best. So let's talk about sampling, right? So I'm going to bring up singles for just a minute because you can obviously just leave your yarn in a single. And when you are sampling, So if you're spinning a single, you can go into it thinking you can put a little bit less twist into that single because when we ply, when we make a two or three ply, we're taking a little bit of twist out, right? So you can spin a single with a little bit less twist than you would a yarn that you're going to ply. Now, if you get a single that is so over spun that you're like, Ooh, you can put it back through your wheel. As if you were going to ply it and take a little bit of that twist out. You would do it pretty quick because you're not trying to take a lot of twist out. But if you spun to the right, or in Z, you would ply, but you're not plying it with anything. You're just trying to take a little twist out. So you would go the opposite way to get some of that twist out. So you would ply to the left in theory. You're spinning to the left. Okay, so that's just my, my moment of talking about singles. A two ply. So here's my sample. I did a two ply. I was trying to get a sample that was underplied. So I'm sitting about 12 inches back. These are probably these were pretty thin. They weren't lace weight. Maybe they were close to lace weight actually as singles. So I went to apply them and I did it at three counts. So I'm sitting, I have my hands 12 inches back, per, every time I'm letting the wheel take my yarn, I'm letting it build in twist at 3 counts, and then it takes my yarn. Then I pull back, I count to 3, then it takes my yarn. So, that yielded a very under plied yarn, in my world. I would say that was under plied. And you could see, if you look at it, that your needle or your hook would kind of go right through those plies, because they're really loose. This again is what I see most common, underplied. So then the next one, same yarn, two ply, I counted to six per feed. And it was just right for me, but that's double, right? That's a lot more. So there is a chance that you need to Hold, if you're thinking your yarn now may be underplied, just hold on to it for one or two more counts and see how it looks. Now, when you look at it, do not look at it when it's stretched across your bobbin because that's going to look, everything's, it's not gonna look right. It's not gonna look right. So make sure you let the yarn feed onto your bobbin, then do, just pull some of it back and see what you think. Okay. So, that was a big difference, right? If you still think it's unapplied, hold on to it for another count or two. This is all going to depend on the weight of the yarn you're spinning. Because you could spin two single, you could be trying to ply two singles that are each a worsted weight yarn. That's going to be very different. Then the three count might work just fine on the ply. So, this is all very subject to relation, but I wanted to give you an example. Alright, so the underlied one we did at three per feed. The one that seemed just right was around six, and then I did a three ply, I counted to four per feed and that was just right. So that's a little bit less than the six were. That was just right at the two ply. And that's because as you add ply to your yarn, you can add a little bit less twist. when you're applying. So just right at a two ply was a six, just right at a three ply was about a four. So just play with it. I mean, that's the biggest thing, you know, if we take all this plying information, play with it. And I know it seems like a lot because you're like, Oh my gosh, this is a slow process as it is. Now I'm going to like take time to do samples or play with my playing or, you know, notch my drive band up to slow things down. But I'm going to remind you all first. All of us love spinning. And most everybody has been so profoundly impacted by how much hand spinning slows down their brain and just brings calm that why not just like dive in and be okay with it being just a little bit slow. So that would be my takeaway there. So, biggest things, count, count, count, count, and sample, just do samples and see what you like, and you're going to get a feel for it. If you have a default yarn, you're going to get a pretty solid feel for where that happy place is with your counting to get the yarn you want. Okay, and just a reminder, if you like the yarn you're getting right now, You're doing it right. But these are just some things to play with. I did also talk a little bit about spiral plying and four strand cable plying. I'm not going to go into that here, but some other things you could look up if you were looking for fun new ways to ply. And of course there's chain plying and there's andean plying. There's all these different things. I've done some workshops on those in Patreon already, but just some other plying options that you could play with to really spice it up. Okay, I think we have covered it. How I can talk for 18 minutes about plying yarn, I do not know, but I hope that helped. I hope there was some takeaway from this episode that will get you excited into your wheel. And if you need some other inspiration, don't forget about our spin to knit along. And I hope to see you or hear from you. There is a Google form you can fill out, you can email me or send Check me out on Patreon there too. There is an episode on the Spin to Knit Along last audio podcast and also in, on the YouTube channel. You can find out more about the Spin Along there. Thank you all so much for listening. I hope to hear from you and please take care until we're together again.